Best Served Cold

I pulled back, heat flushing my cheeks.

I didn’t know what came over me. I just wanted…needed…to kiss him. Just for that second, it’d seemed so damn right to press my lips to his.

“I got it,” I whispered, dropping my hand from his face.

His eyes opened, his gaze slamming into me with a fierce desire burning there. He took a deep breath and let it out, bringing his own hand up to touch his cheek and jaw where my fingers had just trailed.

“Thanks,” he said, voice still low, barely above a whisper. “You’ve got some, too.”

My heart jumped out of my chest. “Where?”

He raised one large hand and cupped my jaw, fingers curled beneath my chin as his thumb touched the very corner of my mouth. “Just here.”

He dipped his head.

My eyes fluttered shut when his lips brushed the corner of my mouth. I knew what he was doing, and I didn’t care.

I didn’t care at all.

“Did you get it?” I whispered.

“No.”

He kissed me. Firm and deliberate, his lips covered mine as his hand snaked around the back of my neck and pulled me closer to him. My fingers wound in his shirt and pulled him right into me as our kiss deepened, his tongue teasing its way between my lips.

We staggered back, my feet dragging me to the stool I’d just vacated. My ass propped up onto it as fire burst through my veins.

Chase’s fingers dug into my hip as he slipped between my legs and tilted my head back to kiss me fully. He had a few inches of height on me, so it worked, even when I slid my arms around to his back and gripped his shirt there.

I could barely breathe. This was everything I’d tried to avoid, but at this moment, it was everything I wanted. I wanted his fingers digging into my hip and his lips moving over mine with a hunger I’d missed for a long, long time.

It felt right and comfortable and like I’d come home.

Home.

It was that overwhelming feeling of being exactly where you knew you were supposed to be.

That was in Key West, in the middle of my half-renovated ice cream store, in the arms of my ex-boyfriend.

And, at that moment, as Chase pulled away from kissing me only to come back and do it all again, I realized that this was so much more complicated than I’d ever imagined it would be.

Because my feelings for this man weren’t entirely dead.

Every second I spent with him reminded me why I fell for him in the first place. His assholery and his jokes and his smartass sexy mouth. His smile and his eyes and how he had that something.

That something special.

The ability to make me feel like I was the only girl in the world. The only girl who mattered. The only girl he saw. The only girl he heard. The only girl he thought about.

The only girl who existed.

I leaned up into him, pushing my body closer to him. His muscles were tight, clenching as he held me to him like I’d disappear into thin air. His cock was hard as it pressed between my legs, and desire flushed through my veins.

I’d forgotten this.

I’d forgotten what it was like to want someone this way. Probably because I’d never wanted anyone the way I’d ever wanted Chase—I doubted I ever would, and that was terrifying.

Chase slid his hands up my body, his fingers probing against my skin as they crept from my hips over my waist and across my breasts to my neck. They came to rest on either side of my neck, his thumbs curving over my jaw to cup my face and hold me right where I was.

The kiss slowed, moving from deep and hungry to slow and gentle. Slow kisses, one after another, sent shivers over my skin and down my spine.

Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.

Each one tasted like he didn’t want to stop, like he didn’t want to let go, just in case it never happened again.

Each one felt like that. Like a desperate cling onto right now, just in case I suddenly jerked away and the moment slipped through his fingers.

And I understood it.

I felt it. I tasted it. I knew it.

When Chase said he was in love with me, it was the way he’d loved me when I’d left him. It was the same all-consuming love we’d shared back then, and guilt wracked me, because I didn’t quite know how to handle the emotions that were rocketing through me right now.

But I knew how he felt.

I tasted his guilt, his regret, his want, his hope, his love. All of it was wrapped into tiny little kisses that were dotted one after another against my lips.

I slid my hands up his body, pushing his arms apart, and wrapped my arms around his neck. I took control and kissed him, making the tiny kisses hard and firm once again.